Читать книгу The Unicorn Girl - Michael Kurland - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

It was a year after the butterflies. Things had sort of quieted back to normal. The reality pill, along with its audio-visual hallucinations, was a thing of the past; the supply gone, except for an odd one or two that Chester seemed to come up with whenever he felt creative. But then, when Chester felt creative, there was no telling what he’d come up with.

The only puzzle in my life at the moment was the two-week-old disappearance of a close friend and cohort of ours, Tom Waters. But then, Tom was a sometime professional magician, and given to disappearances. Usually he’d pop up after a few days and complain bitterly about the lack of civilization wherever he’d gone. Civilization, to Tom, was measured only by the relative abundance of peanut butter, cupcakes and cola; that being the scope of what he allowed to be food and drink.

Chester the Barefoot Anderson was on stage playing electronic harpsichord with his new group, the Elven Five. I was sitting at a table toward the back of the Trembling Womb, trying to ignore the music well enough to compose a sonnet to a lady I had recently become rather fond of. Somehow the music was making its way across well-worn synapses from the ear part of my brain to the hand part without stopping anywhere at the conscious level. When I saw that I had just written You are lovely as a tweedle and you diddle pam my heart as the third line, I gave up and put the notebook away.

Then I saw the girl.

She was standing just inside the doorway, not ten feet away, talking to Overly-Friendly Phil, the manager. I’d never seen her before, I was sure of that, but my subconscious told me I knew this girl. She had large, dark eyes, set in the kind of oval face Flemish masters put only on the finest angels. Her hair was dark, color indeterminate in the coffeehouse’s dim light, and folded gently about her neck and shoulders, reaching somewhere around the small of her back. She was dressed in a sort of tunic that made her boyish figure look awfully girlish. After a few seconds I realized where I knew her from.

In my youth, during an extended period of reading romantic literature, I had rescued this girl from everything from evil knights to fearsome dragons in many a half-remembered dream. This was the Girl Who Talked to Unicorns: the symbol of purity and grace I had sworn to serve when I took my oath of fealty and stood vigil over my sword one long night. Ivanhoe had nothing on me when I was twelve years old. This, by Loki, was the girl of my dreams.

I couldn’t help it. I got up and walked over to where they were standing. Their conversation stopped as I approached, but I, unabashed and unabashable, plunged on. I bowed low to the girl, knowing that in a few seconds I’d feel as silly as I probably looked, but living only for the moment “Fair damsel,” I heard myself saying, “how may I serve you?”

If she had giggled, I would have stalked back to my table and sulked for days. If she had giggled, none of this would have happened.

She smiled. “Good sir,” she said, with a voice like ripples in a silver stream, “I would that you aid me. I search for my unicorn.” She had a distinctly Cockney accent.

* * * *

There were, of course, several possibilities. It might be a put-on. It could be a humorous response to my greeting. It might have deep psychological meaning, given the old unicorn legends. But somehow, I knew she was serious; This girl of my dream needed help finding her unicorn.

“Where did you lose it?” I asked.

Overly-Friendly Phil gave me a dirty look. “You know what she’s talking about?” he demanded.

“Godfrey Daniel!” I explained, waving my arms and speaking above the level of the music to make myself heard. “What is there to know? The girl needs help. A damsel in distress. Surely that should be sufficient.”

“Calm down,” Phil said, patting me on the shoulder, a gesture I am not fond of. “Take her over to your table and talk to her. I’ll send over some coffee, compliments of the house. I got enough troubles.”

Taking his advice, and his free coffee, I led the unicorn girl back to my table and sat her down across from me. “Now,” I said, “Tell me all about it.”

The music, I noticed, had stopped. A bearded, plumpish figure was approaching the table. “Ah, Michael,” the figure said in a stage murmur that carried over the intervening tables. “This Bach and Rock is hard work. Credo. I must rest.” He sank into a chair up to his elbows, which he rested on the table. “Good evening,” he said to the girl. “Are you one of Michael’s, or may I scratch your back?”

“Chester,” I told the girl. “Glerph. Anderson. This is.”

“Glerph?” Chester asked, raising one eyebrow. He used to practice that in front of a mirror.

“And I...my name is Michael. Mike. Kurland.” I was flustered.

“You’re flustered,” Chester told me. “I have a back fetish,” he said to the girl, “but we’ll forget it for now, since it seems to fluster Michael the Theodore Bear to hear about it.”

“I am Sylvia,” the girl said, looking slightly amused.

“Ah, Sylvia. From Sylvian. Creature of the wood. A delightful name. Tell me, Sylvia, what are you doing out of your enchanted wood?”

“I have lost my unicorn,” she told him. “And Michael is going to help me find him.” She sounded very positive.

“Glerph?” Chester asked.

“You heard the lady,” I told him.

“Indeed? Ah, humph. Unicorn.” Chester had often told me of his firm belief in unicorns; now he was getting a chance to prove it.

Sylvia looked at me, and then at Chester, and then back at me. “I do not understand you people. You behave very strangely. Ever since I got off the train everyone has been behaving very strangely. Perhaps it’s just that I am not used to this part of the country.”

“Yes,” Chester assured her. “You’re from Liverpool, of course.” He was very proud of his ability to place different accents.

“No,” Sylvia told him, “Boston:”

Chester turned and glowered at the stage. I could tell he was beginning to think this was a carefully arranged practical joke. He always suspected me of practical jokes. Sometimes he was right. I, at least, never put anything in his orange juice. I was constantly finding samples of various drugs unknown to Modem Science in mine.

Jake Holmes, the world’s foremost WASP ethnic folk singer, was tuning up on the stage. I affected a strong interest in Jake’s lead-in routine while Chester turned the glower on me.

“Boston,” Chester said.

“It’s in Massachusetts Commonwealth,” the girl told him.

Jake finished the tuning process and broke into song. Several teenybrats and a few of their mothers wiggled silently in their seats; their eyes intent on Jake’s clean-cut, boyish profile. I wouldn’t call the look one of wanton desire, but then I’m no expert on those things.

A very old red leather face

Sits by itself watching nothing ground....

“Commonwealth,” Chester said clearly.

“Do you know where you misplaced your unicorn?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say that I misplaced him, exactly.”

“Good for you,” Chester agreed. “I wouldn’t exactly say that either.”

“It was when I got off the train.”

“Train?” I asked.

She nodded. “The train. Adolphus seemed rather excited and nervous. We all were after what happened. Then he just bolted and ran off into the woods. It’s very unlike him. The whole crew is out looking for him now.”

I looked at Chester. Chester looked at me. “Do you remember when the last one was?” he asked.

I nodded. “About six years ago. They made quite a ceremony of it. The end of an era and all that sort of thing.”

“The last what?” Sylvia asked. Jake sang a few more lines while Chester and I didn’t answer.

Reality staggers and weaves

Takes it away from the doorway it lives in....

“The last train,” I told her. “The very last train into San Francisco before they tore up the tracks. The engine’s in the Museum of Science and Industry now.”

Sylvia looked puzzled. “San Francisco?”

“Or at least Oakland. The city across the bay. We’re thirty miles south of it now.”

“Oh,” Sylvia said. “I’m afraid I know the names of few of the local towns.”

I glanced at Chester. It occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one capable of practical jokes.

“Is it near New Camelot?” Sylvia asked.

Chester leaned back. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He slipped the sopranino recorder out of his belt and put it to his lips.

“At any rate, you must be mistaken about the train,” Sylvia told me calmly.

“I must,” I agreed, “it’s a compulsion.”

Jake started another song. Chester played back-of-the-room accompaniment on the recorder very softly. His face had the distinct bland look that meant he was deep in thought.

“You said the whole crew is out looking for the unicorn now?” I asked. Sylvia nodded. ‘What crew is that?’

“From the circus,” Sylvia told me. “Everyone that wasn’t too busy is out looking for Adolphus. I followed the twisty road, calling his name, until I got here. I thought he’d come to me, since I’m his keeper now and we’re rather fond of each other, but he didn’t. Maybe one of the others has found him by now, but I doubt it. If he won’t come to me, then he won’t let anyone else near him.”

Twisty road? I wondered.

“You’re from a circus?” Chester asked.

“Of course. Where else would you find a unicorn?”

“Yes,” Chester agreed. “Where else indeed?” Jake had finished his set and was going offstage. In the silence Chester played a variant of an old circus song that we called “MacDougal Street Saturday Night” on the recorder. He followed that with a complicated baroque version of “Greensleeves.”

“You play that well,” Sylvia said.

“Thank you.”

“Adolphus is quite fond of woodwind music. Do you happen to know ‘Barkus Is Willing’?”

“Barkus Is Willing?”

“Yes. That’s his favorite. It goes ‘ta ti dum-dum ti de diddly di, ta dum reedle fiddle fap’.” She had a strong, clear soprano voice.

“I, er, think I know it under a different name,” Chester said. He played it for her:

“That’s it,” she said. “But could you play it lower?”

“Lower?” Chester asked. Putting the sopranino down, he took the alto recorder from its canvas case and started adjusting the sections in that mysterious way recorder players put their machines together. “What key?”

“Fa, I think.”

“Right,” Chester agreed. “The key of fa it is.” He blew note through the hardwood tube, and then a riff. “How’s that?”

“Very good. Excellent,” the girl agreed. “If you’d come out into the woods with me, you could play ‘Barkus is Willing’ while I call Adolphus. He must be around somewhere.”

I was, I freely admit, miffed. Pied Piper Anderson was doing it again. Just because he could make music come out of that petrified pipe, while the best I could ever do was a startled pheep.

Sylvia turned to me. She had the largest eyes I’d ever seen off of an oil painting. “Of course you’ll come, Michael, and help. Please?”

Wild gryphons couldn’t have kept me away.